Pages

Saturday, June 2, 2012

Speaking of Zombies...

The reports of my death have been vastly exaggerated. I've been blogging elsewhere, during let's call them the dark years (but really, just several months) when I spiraled in and out and around semi-depression, work, stress, name it, life. No one can tell except the few predisposed to check on me (God bless your energies), no one's supposed to, I mean, come on, it ain't even the clinical kind. Just lost the cortical lottery, really, nothing much to see here. It's a constant battle, but I've been making some strides (waking up early for one) and so I'm glad to say I'm back out here wreaking havoc, and whoever you are, you're welcome to listen.

So, where were we? I'm turning 31 in the next couple of weeks. Life's been kind, considering how bad I've been to it: I finally got that two-week leave I've been lusting for, although spent most of it on a personal project, which is, to say, work, too. I've been to libraries, houses, malls, coffee shops, writing like a madman.

There were tons of questions when I got back, but most I can skate around with..well, the truth, really, which is that I've clarified what I've wanted because I wasn't getting any younger, and while it might ultimately kill the career I've set my ladder against when I started in my current job (the only biggest risk I was taking, in my eyes), let's just say it was both a very hard and very easy decision.

But now to get on with life. So many things have happened to my batch mates (pregnancies, promotions, parental concerns) there were days when I'm low on the happy that I'd think about the stuff that didn't pan out for me. And it wasn't that I wanted kids, or a high-flying corporate career (just realized I really wasn't cut out for 9-to-5, although the fact that I've actually met people who were cut out for 9-to-5 only taught me that it wasn't weird to want to be out of the system) or a commitment (shudders) but something, a stake in the ground, a dent in the universe.

And so, as with everything else that I value and cherish in life (like spam and bacon, sushi and now, Botan Tuna), I can only make meaning out of things when I write about them (which, ironically, could have been the reason I've been glum all along--glum versus glam, now there's an example of the difference one vowel can make).

And so what I really want to say is while I always have the inclination to regret, which is a bad recipe for any kind of life, I do have one reliable tool to reboot my psyche when needed (meaning to put all that sadness into perspective, in that I am, quite objectively, living a more or less interesting life, one where you can drag friends to eat your kind of chicken one Saturday, or one where you really like your parents, or one where your brother is Bartender Extraordinaire). I was a wuss for giving that up for a while, that was arrogance at its finest, the assumption that I can wing it not having plans.

And so okay, sadness over, I'm back, I'm writing. I'm working on my goals, however strange or far-fetched they are, and which will readily declare themselves somewhere in this blog again when I'm up to it.

Let me fan my peacock tail a bit, though (and I do this only because I have nothing else to tell me I'm a writer but pages of handwritten--well, I've finished typing them up two days ago, thank God--manuscript and fleeting ideas for stories I would never classify as literary, or would want to), and show you this, dear reader, what I've been up to the past month or so:

I can only wish you find your core because, in the words of Gordon Korman's Jason Cardone (and I'm paraphrasing here), "You have to take the one thing you're good at and go to places with it." It's almost a biological imperative. Do this, or die (or live a boring, tasteless life). See you soon, buttercups!